Alhamdulillah, the tour has wrapped up successfully and I’m back in the land of the Trinity, Trinidad. The next few posts on Calling Christians will focus on my experiences with Islam and Muslims in Toronto, the debates, the dialogues, interactions with Christian missionaries and apologists, I’ll also be commenting on a few negative incidents that occurred in Toronto. It’s important to highlight both the good and the bad, as is natural, the good outweighed the bad, but nonetheless, the bad must also be commented upon. There’s a lot to be published and commented on, so do excuse me for the lull in posts, I’ll be sure to make up for that in the upcoming posts about my Toronto adventures.
Yesterday night I had an opportunity to speak on the topic of the “Role of Scriptural Manuscripts in Islam and Christianity”, at the al Fauz Islamic Center in Scarborough, Toronto. Alhamdulillah, it was well received and to be quite honest I was taken aback by the sheer amount of brotherhood, sincerity and love I felt with this community. I witnessed people of all kinds sit together in harmony and engage in indepth study of the Qur’an and the New Testament. The result of the lecture can be summed up in this gift card I received thereafter:
The card reads:
Brother Ijaz,
Assalaam alaikum.
Thank you for everything…
Your visit to our Al Fauz Islamic Center was enlightening and we were honoured.
“The most grateful to Allah are those who are most grateful to other people…”
– Prophet Muhammad
(Peace and blessings be upon him)
Ubaid
Aug 6, 2016.
Here’s a photo of the packed center (do note, ladies were in another private section):
I had a wonderful opportunity to engage with the attendees:
The members of this community were keen, motivated, sincere. Their passion for knowledge left me in awe. This is most certainly not a normal community, it’s a community that exemplifies the Prophetic Sunnah, that seeks to improve itself by engaging in scholarship, humanitarian efforts and community outreach. It was an honour to spend time with these wonderful and amazing people. I took the opportunity to meet as much people as I could have, and tried my best to exchange a few words when I did so. They prepared a very tasty, spicy, delicious Biryani for us afterwards. Everyone seemed to want their brother beside them to eat before they themselves did, bringing sauces and passing plates to each other. That camaraderie was beautiful to witness and insha Allah, I pray and hope that one day I can once again engage with these amazing Muslims. May Allah preserve them, Ameen.
In our latest episode Br. Ijaz and Br. Aqil discuss Sam Shamoun’s discrediting of his former employers at the Trinity Channel, and their conversion to the Prosperity Gospel sect. Why didn’t Sam warn Christians about the financial impropriety ongoing at the channel? Why didn’t he warn them 10 months ago about their apostasy and following what he calls a “false Gospel”? This and more are answered with emails, evidences and quotes.
Yesterday I invited Sam Shamoun to lunch with me. Today Sam has responded by blocking me on Facebook. Despite blocking me, Sam decided to respond to one of my articles on the inanity of the Trinitian Godhead. Here I am, discussing with fellow Christians, arguments about the Trinity:
Sam then decided to respond to me, by copy-pasting two of his previous articles:
The question remains, Sam constantly chooses to respond to what I say, post and share, yet at the same time insists he doesn’t have to engage with me. You can’t have it both ways Sam, you need to make up your mind. Addressing me indirectly simply indicates that you do pay attention to what I say, but that you don’t have the courage to engage with me directly. I completely understand that. It’s okay.
Some would remember that a few months or so ago, Sam Shamoun used to hold shows and debates on the Trinity/ ABN Channel. At some point both him and David Wood stopped appearing on the channel. David in an email indicated it was because he could no longer work with the unprofessional Christian staff of the channel and also could not tolerate the ignorant Christian audience of the channel. In an email dated September 15th, 2105 he says:
Also, why would we take callers in the middle of such short debates? Was this your idea, or did Haifa suggest it? I see multiple problems here. First, we’re not in the studio, and I anticipate all kinds of technical difficulties arising. (We often have technical difficulties with questions in the studio, so I can’t imagine things going smoothly with everything happening somewhere else.) The more complicated the set-up, the more problems are going to slip in to derail the debates. Second, the vast majority of viewers would rather listen to us address a topic than a questioner asking us questions. It would be nice if all callers asked relevant, probing questions, but they won’t. Good questions will be only a fraction of the actual questions we get. People will call in with insults, they will start yelling and we’ll have to cut them, and most of the questions will be completely irrelevant to the topics. That’s just what happens when phone lines are opened for anyone to call in.
In another email on the same date he also said:
As for ABN, I’ve been working with them for years, but I’m at the end of my rope. I simply want to get these debates out of the way so that I don’t have to deal with this network ever again. (Yes, name redacted, years of working with ABN allows us to be frank with each other, and too many frustrating experiences have taken away any inclination I have to soften my words. This is why there’s a need to part ways. We simply don’t work well together and can’t agree on anything. I’m to the point where I get a miserable, sinking feeling whenever I’m contacted by ABN, because I know it’s going to ruin my day.)
Today, Sam has tried to create another excuse as to why the TV station no longer wanted to work with Sam and David, he says on Facebook:
Here’s the problem, at the time David and Sam stopped appearing on the Trinity/ ABN Channel, David sent out numerous emails claiming that he was upset, angry and frustrated with both the ignorant and unprofessional staff at the station, as well as with the Christian viewers who supported him, calling in and insulting guests. Sam, some ten months later in an attempt to deflect the personal differences that led them to part from the Christian polemics TV station, instead blames his lack of appearances due to the “false Gospel” message that the station is now sharing, some ten months later. In other words, Sam is blaming something that happened yesterday, ten months after he was booted from the station due to personal conflicts with the staff, as the reason for why he no longer appeared on the station ten months ago. That simply does not make sense for anyone who spends more than a few seconds to contemplate the claims made.
All in all, both Sam and David had seriously negative and angry views about the station and their viewership, and found themselves no longer having an amicable relationship with the TV station’s staff. They had no public excuse at that time to mask the personal conflicts that led to their leaving of the station so they remained silent until they could use another excuse to explain their glaring absence. Today, that excuse came in the form of the Trinity Station endorsing a heretical form of Christianity with Joel Osteen at its head. Thus, the issue presents itself that the Trinity Channel is now preaching a brand of Christianity that Sam and company fundamentally view as heretical. An entire TV station converted to a heretical form of Christianity and Sam Shamoun, who views himself as a great Christian teacher and apologist, who has the Spirit of God allegedly inside him, could not convince his own Christians to remain in their faith.
The question thus begs itself, if people like Sam Shamoun, David Wood and their student Jonathan McLatchie who consider themselves educated and guided by the Holy Spirit cannot save their own Christian brothers and sisters from following what they consider to be heretical and false Gospels, then why don’t they focus on the Christian community rather than on Islam? It means to say that they cannot save their own Christians, and so they need to find some other way to keep themselves relevant, which is to deflect from the dire situation they are in within the Christian community and in so doing are using Islam as a distraction from the growing apostasies in their own Christian communities. Sam and David spent years preaching on the Trinity/ ABN Channel, only for the channel and its viewers to begin preaching what they call a false Gospel.
Clearly there is a problem with Christianity, if its “greatest” and most “popular” apologists cannot save their fellow Christians from abandoning their faith en masse.
Recently, a quote from Samuel Zwemer’s “Moslem Doctrine of God” has been circulating on the internet and is being celebrated as a succinct explication of how Christianity fundamentally overcomes the “distance of God” in Islamic theology.
As is typical in missionary writings, Islamic theology is portrayed as having a distant God, that Christianity is superior to either Islam or Judaism because God is within Christians through the Holy Spirit. Here’s the problem though, does God have to be spatially within us for our hearts to be renewed? Christians themselves refute this idea by saying that God is truly a Spirit in nature and not a material being, “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” – John 4:24, therefore what is the reasoning for God having to be spatially (materially) within us for us to be guided? Therefore this concept that God must be spatially within us for any of us to be guided is both irrational and self-contradictory. The Qur’an itself responds to this claim, it says:
“And We have already created man and know what his soul whispers to him, and We are closer to him than [his] jugular vein.” – Qur’an 50:16.
God is closer to us, without having to be in the material world. God’s sovereignty is such that space does not affect what He can and cannot do, so the belief that a God from afar is somehow less superior than a God that is “within us” does not make any sense. This fundamentally means that Christians believe God is not all powerful and that God somehow loses power and ability based on distance. Yet, I’m sure if we ask them if God loses power based on distance, they’d disagree, yet they’d gladly offer this as an argument for the truth of Christianity in a book about Islam, as is seen above. This sort of deceptive inconsistency permeates throughout Christian missionary works.
Here’s another problem with that quote above, do Christians really expect us Muslims to believe that God is within them, that God within them is renewing their hearts and bringing them into submission with God’s will? Consider this, if obedience to God’s will means living a good, moral life, no pre-marital sex, no substance abuse, not stealing, not lying, etc, then it means that Christians need God within them to do things Muslims can do without having God within us. On the simple example of substance abuse, a druggie, if it takes a Christian needing the Holy Spirit within them to renew their heart and have them overcome an addiction, and yet a Muslim through their belief in Tawheed can overcome such a problem, then it means to say that Muslims by themselves are greater in will and power than the very Christian God.
In other words it takes God and a human to do what a Muslim can do by themselves through their belief in the truth of Islam. What Christians need to do is present an objective metric to measure the work of the Spirit within them. What do Christians do with the Spirit that a Muslim, Jew, Atheist or Hindu cannot? Can they point to a single living person today that meets this metric standard? Just one person, that’s all. In the end, the quote from the above book is an indictment against the Christian faith, as opposed to a rational critique of the Islamic faith. I’m not sure why Christians find it useful to pat themselves on the back with such drivel, when in the end it paints Christianity in a bad light, if only a moment is spent considering the theology presented in their propaganda.
Jonathan has just released another article about me, and I’m honestly flummoxed with respect to his opening few words. Polemicists like Jonathan, have always claimed that Muslims do not understand the Trinity (well, who does?), and so we should rely on the Christian community for the explanation of this doctrine. Therefore it causes me concern that when Muslims do seek counsel from the Christian community about the statements of their polemicists about the Trinity, we are regarded as promoting division and discord. If we don’t ask them about the Trinity, it’s because we’re allegedly ignoring what they say and when we do ask them, it’s because we allegedly want to sow discord amongst them.
I’m okay with Jonathan making false claims about me, because I understand that he’s upset that during a discussion about Jonathan’s heretical ideas about the Trinity one of his close friends denounced his views as “not orthodox”. One can see that video here:
Here’s the funny thing about Jonathan and his friend, Jonathan’s friend is now attempting to backtrack on his statements after putting Jonathan into hot water. Unfortunately, in a poor attempt to save face, Jonathan falsified comments about his friend, here is one such example:
Here’s the thing though, I did meet Jonathan yesterday, and I did play the clip for him up until 1 minute after the sound bite in the video ends. Nowhere in that 1 minute after the sound bite above does his friend Rudolph ever say, “But Jonathan did not say that”. In fact, nowhere in the 36 minutes and 31 seconds Jonathan’s friend and I spoke, did he ever utter such a statement. In fact, the entire conversation is currently circulating and has been circulating among both Muslims and Christians since yesterday, Jonathan was even told he could come to Hyde Park and collect a copy if he wished. What this means, is that in order to save face, Jonathan has lied about his friend Rudolph, and even after hearing the clip himself and never hearing Rudolph ever state “But Jonathan did not say that”, Jonathan continues to claim his friend Rudolph was misrepresented. Simply, what’s going on here is that Jonathan has found himself in a bad position and I do not blame him for going to desperate ends. Jonathan’s very friend is also in a tough position and is put between his faith and his friend. It’s a very uncomfortable position for Jonathan, his friends and fellow Christians. The interesting thing though, is that I don’t need a voice recording to show Jonathan that his friend has already publicly criticized him for his heretical views about the Trinity.
Take note of the above public conversation. Christians are “not quite comfortable” with the claims of Jonathan regarding the Trinity. In fact, his friend Rudolph replies that he agrees, he says, “I agree”. So what do we have now? We have a voice conversation where his friend states clearly that Jonathan’s view were not orthodox as expressed in the video, we have a conversation on Facebook where his friend agrees that he’s uncomfortable with what Jonathan said, and then as a good friend he goes on to correct Jonathan by trying to explain what Jonathan meant to say, as opposed to what he did say. Jonathan tried and fell into error, his friends are in agreement that they’re uncomfortable with what he stated in that video and now they have to try and say what Jonathan didn’t in that video clip in Hyde Park. It’s clearly caused division among them, and that’s why Jonathan blames me in his article. It’s his way of expressing that his friends themselves, have publicly denounced him as being in error.
With respect to his claims about me “misrepresenting” Sam’s article, Jonathan has also changed his position. Yesterday he proclaimed I misquoted Sam. Today, I’ve apparently no longer misquoted but misrepresented Sam. The problem is this, Sam claims the Qur’an makes an error by stating:
They have certainly disbelieved who say, “Allah is the third of three.” And there is no god except one God. – 5:73.
So here’s the problem, for a number of years Sam has claimed that Christians do not teach that God is a third of three. On Sunday, Jonathan claimed in Hyde Park that God was a third of three. So now there’s a conundrum. If as Jonathan said that God in Christianity is a third of three, then it makes Sam Shamoun a liar in his numerous articles claiming the Qur’an is wrong. If Jonathan is wrong and what Sam claimed in his articles is true, then Jonathan is a heretic. Either way, Jonathan has put Sam into hot water and that’s why you see Sam not commenting on the issue but only Jonathan, because once Sam makes a statement one way or the either, he then publicly embarrasses himself and Jonathan. That’s one of the reasons that Sam’s quote was used and why Jonathan had to change his false claim of me misquoting, to me misrepresenting Sam. Jonathan then goes on to say:
Ijaz also, unfortunately, butchered the comments of Dr. James White regarding the meaning of theotetos, translated by the KJV as “godhead” but which White objects to since Godhead is commonly used to refer to the Trinity and the word theotetos is referring to Deity, i.e. to that which makes God God.
Jonathan completely missed the point. I in fact, didn’t touch the comments of Dr. James White, they are unedited and properly cited, this is just another poor attempt at deflection and deception by Jonathan. With respect to the quote itself, I agree with Dr. White, in fact, in the video I published the very quote was used to show that Christians do believe the Godhead is God, is a Deity. Jonathan is so caught up in trying to respond to the trouble he’s found himself in, he doesn’t even recognize when I agree with him. So, uh, thank you Jonathan for demonstrating that you’re simply not paying attention and are merely trying to respond rather than to understand what is being said, your mistake and your haste speaks volumes about your character.
I also do not see why he had to re-explain Dr. White’s words on the Father not being 1/3rd of God. That’s exactly what the quote I used said:
“The Father is not ⅓ of God, the Son ⅓ of God, the Spirit ⅓ of God. Each is fully God, coequal with the others, and that eternally.”
White, James R.. The Forgotten Trinity (p. 27). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The quote stands as is, I’m in agreement with what Dr. White said, not in disagreement. That’s exactly why I quoted him in the first place. Now, what Jonathan said next is extremely important to the situation he now finds himself in, he says:
“What I meant is that the Father is a third of the Godhead in the sense…”
Jonathan accepts he made a heretical claim about the Trinity, he distinguishes between what he said in the video, and today by what he currently means. It’s no longer, “what I said…,” but is now, “what I meant…”. Jonathan knows that he screwed up, his friends know that he screwed up, and now the recorded conversations, the recorded Facebook comments, the silence of some of his friends, the criticism from the Christian community and now Jonathan’s lying and falsification of statements all stand against him. Jonathan himself acknowledges that he’s disappointed in himself, that he has to write such articles:
“It disappoints me that I even need to write responses like this.”
I agree Jonathan, we are all disappointed in you, that you need to write such poor articles. We recognize and stand in solidarity with the disappointment you have in yourself. We do call you to a higher standard, so that you can no longer be disappointed in yourself.
After a disappointing and embarrassing encounter with Br. Mansoor, Jonathan McLatchie has challenged Br. Mansoor for a re-do. The following video in its entirety really demonstrated Jonathan’s inability to dialogue and debate under pressure:
This video has cleaned up audio and subtitles to hear the mistakes that Jonathan made:
In this video, both Dr. James White and Jonathan’s friend, Sam Shamoun correct and refute Jonathan’s mistakes about core Christian doctrines:
Unfortunately Jonathan claimed that fellow Christians were in agreement with him, and that he did not make heretical claims about the Trinity, which is contradicted in this conversation I had with his friend, Rudolph Bushoff:
After suffering such a humiliating debate defeat against Br. Mansoor, Jonathan is begging and pleading for another turn, this is Br. Mansoor’s response to him:
It appears that Jonathan Mclatchie had an unpleasant experience at Speakers’ Corner speaking with us (Hamid, me and Paul). He wishes for a second chance. He has challenged me openly for a debate. Needless to say that I am not interested in public/ formal debates and will have to let this one pass. Perhaps what he should instead do is to answer some of the points already made in our brief exchange at Speakers’ Corner to the wider Christian audience who might be reflecting on burning him on the stakes for his unorthodox belief if that were to happen in classical times.
Alternatively, if he is really desperate, I am found visiting most Sundays at Speakers’ Corner where we can continue our friendly discussion there informally, (sitting comfortably on the grass with the Sun shining over us) as the exchanges there can be more fruitful for mutual understanding of each others faith than from a formal debate setting where often it’s all about scoring points, in my opinion.
I can understand that whenever an intellectual exchange takes place on the Christian doctrine of Trinity at Speakers’ Corner, there often seems to be a realisation of a need for a second chance in a different debate setting as appreciated by external audience by the virtue of internet, as if that debate setting will provide somehow a comfort zone where the same points made in the exchange will wash away. As for Jonathan, I did want to continue our discussion at the park a little bit later from the initial exchange, but he was not that keen at all and had instead jumped on the ladder with Jay’s students only to be heckled down badly by the regular hecklers.
Anyways, apologetic Christians should rethink about throwing open challenges to lay Muslims like myself instead of engaging with our scholarly community. Or may be abandon the idea of formally debating our Islamic scholars, especially when even the Muslim laity seems to rock the foundation of the faith of your scholarly community?
Br. Sarwar of Hyde Park has released one of the most entertaining videos of the year, Br. Mansoor running laps around McLatchie in discussing monotheism in the Bible and the Qur’an. McLatchie’s main line of argumentation was, “…in my debate with Dr. Shabir”. The brothers at Hyde Park were unsure whether McLatchie thought all brown people were the same (given his previous comments about Muslims) and Br. Mansoor had to clarify that he indeed was not Dr. Shabir, several times! Surprise guests include my friends Br. Hamid and Br. Paul of Blogging Theology.
The ending of the video is quite a pleasant one, Jonny becomes increasingly frustrated and angry with being asked to explain his reasoning and beliefs. After seemingly being unable to joust with Br. Mansoor, Jonny decided to storm off mid-discussion. Hilariously enough, after several days, Jonny messaged one of the Muslims in the above video saying he enjoyed the “banter”. He enjoyed it so much, he had to storm off. The Muslims at Hyde Park would like to thank Jonny for coming down and helping them in their da’wah efforts.
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